


teenager scare (the living shit out of me)

by strongbut



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dad!Percy, Drama!, Family Secrets, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lockpicking!, guns!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 19:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13442256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strongbut/pseuds/strongbut
Summary: Percy has successfully leaned into being disgustingly sentimental and domestic, albeit with a lot of crying. When his eldest daughter finds one of his guns, he finds himself confronting the man he used to be.





	teenager scare (the living shit out of me)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from 'teenagers' by my chemical romance b/c i'm still 16 years old at heart.

Hanna was the eldest child and, much to her parents dismay, an expert lock picker. She started small at first: using a hairpin to break into the pantry for sweets, then after being caught and subsequently grounded, breaking herself out of her room. Her parents, never fully comfortable with discipline, wrung their hands over her early predilection for crime and then, distracted with their other children, began to see it as an endearing quirk, much like Little Percy’s refusal to wear shoes indoors, or Lou’s obsession with “rock collecting”.

  
Besides, it reminded them of Vax’ildan. They never said it outright, but sometimes Percy would catch Vex wiping away tears after braiding Hanna’s hair in the morning.

  
“I just have such fond memories, you see. Mother would braid our hair at breakfast, every single day until we left.”

  
Hanna was the only one with hair long and thick enough for the ritual, and sometimes when Percy saw her out of the corner of his eye he would imagine, for a wonderful moment, that Vax was finally home, and then he’d find himself getting teary-eyed as well. To be fair, this was not unusual: Percy’s experience of fatherhood was of constantly being on the verge of sniffling because Ada said something that reminded him of something Vesper said once, or because Little Percy scraped his knees playing hide-and-seek and Big Percy just can’t help but cry along with him. Hanna’s resemblance to Vax was one of many little heartaches and he managed as best as he could, always carrying half a dozen handkerchieves in his pocket in case of sudden wracking sobs. Vex thought it endearing.

  
So they learned to live with having no privacy. When Percy and Vex needed mamma-papa-alone-time, they pushed an armoire in front of the door. It was inconvenient, yes, but if they cared much about inconvenience they never would have had five children.

  
Perhaps they shouldn’t have gotten complacent, but there were simply so many other things to worry about and Hanna was, for all intents and purposes, a good girl. She wasn’t a bully like Ada or chronically anxious like Lou or desperate for attention like Little Percy. She did her chores without complaining, excelled at her studies, and yes, broke into anything with a lock. She also had a tendency to gorge herself on chocolate which, if you asked Percy and Vex, they would have considered a much larger concern.

  
All this to say: when Hanna slunk into Percy’s locked study, he was not particularly concerned. He looked up from the fifth diplomatic crisis of the day and there she was, sitting in front of his desk, brown eyes narrowed. He removed his spectacles, wiped them on his sleeve, and put them back on. Hanna began to whistle.

  
“Hello dear. How long have you been here?”

  
“Ten minutes.” She smiled suddenly, unable to contain her glee at besting her father. “Papa, can I ask you a question?”

  
Percy sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry dearest, but is it urgent? I really must sort out this mess with Kymal.”

  
“Well… I found this in your workshop and I wanted to know what it was.” And, just like that, she reached into her jacket, pulled out a pistol, and dropped it on the desk. Percy blinked several times in quick succession then went very white, then very green. Hanna watched him closely.

  
“Papa?”

  
For a minute, they just sat there, both staring at the weapon. Percy successfully fought the urge to vomit, but kept his hand clasped over his mouth just in case. He thought, somewhat proudly, how sheltered his children were that they’d never seen a gun. Then he felt sick all over again, and also a bit like crying. Very aware of Hanna’s piercing gaze, he cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter.

  
“I’m glad you asked me. This is…” He paused, then picked up the pistol gingerly and tucked it in a desk drawer. He didn’t care where; he only wanted it as far from his daughter’s sight as possible. “Well, dearest, I’m afraid it’s a weapon.”

  
To his horror, Hanna only seemed more eager at this revelation. “What kind of weapon? How does it work?”

  
“It’s a very… It’s very… It’s dangerous. More than you could understand. I should have been more careful, I thought… Well, it’s too late for that.” He stumbled over his words, unsure how to establish the pistol’s potential for harm without exciting her curiosity. “I made it. And I hurt people with it. And it’s something I’m very ashamed of. I… I can tell you more later, when I’m done working but…” He closed his eyes. “You must promise me that you won’t touch anything that looks like that again. Not the silly kind of promise, like promising not to peek at your birthday presents, but really. I want your word, erm, woman-to-man.”

  
Hanna nodded solemnly. “Will you promise to tell me about it?”

  
Feeling a bit like he’d been flung from the top of the castle, Percy nodded. “I will. And you mustn’t tell your siblings about it, especially the little ones. You might have really hurt yourself or someone else playing with this. I don’t… I don’t want you to have to carry that guilt with her.” He pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and began dabbing at his face, surprised to find himself very sweaty. Hanna frowned.

  
“Okay. But I think if you hurt anybody, you must have had a good reason and they must have deserved it,” she said, looking so serious and small that Percy wanted to scoop her up in his arms right there and send her back to the nursery. He would have to explain to her that he wasn’t perfect and kind and yes, she had to know that in a vague, childish way, but deep down she still couldn’t imagine her parents as people who weren’t her parents, who were once children themselves, who used to sleep in dirty caverns and not four-poster beds. It had been easy for Percy to forgive himself when he had five little people following him around, so simple and fierce in their love and admiration. And now it was crashing down. They were old enough where he couldn’t fix all their problems with a silly face and a new toy; Hanna was thirteen, only a little bit younger than he had been when— No, he couldn’t think of that. She was so young. He didn’t think he’d ever been that young, even as a child.

  
He was just a bookish middle-aged man who sometimes threw out his back giving piggyback rides and who, quite rightly, Hanna ought to be ashamed of. He was the villain in her storybooks, the fire-breathing dragon that burnt the townspeople to a crisp rather than give up his gold.

  
“Even if you have a good reason for hurting someone, it doesn’t lessen the guilt. And I didn’t, not always. I was… I was not a good man. Do you understand? And the best I can do now is make sure that you and your brothers and sisters don’t have to suffer for my mistakes.” He gestured vaguely at his desk. “That weapon was a mistake.”  
Hanna squirmed in her seat. It took a long time for her to speak, and when she did, it was plaintive and miserable. “I’m sorry I found it. I didn’t know it would make you sad.”

  
“It’s alright. Really, I’m not sad. Truly” And he gave her a clownish smile to prove it. “I’m just very worried about the trade guilds in Kymon at the moment. You, my sweetheart, could never make me sad.”

  
Hanna considered this. “What if I dropped Lainey?” At five months old, Elaine was the youngest and most droppable of the children.

  
Percy stifled a genuine chuckle into his handkerchief. “If you dropped Elaine, I would be very angry. But I wouldn’t be sad.”

  
“You’re lying,” Hanna said.

  
“That is a very rude thing to say to your father.”

  
“Well it’s true! I thought I was always supposed to tell the truth!”

  
Hanna was laughing now. Just like that, her serious brown eyes had widened and she was a child again, prodding her curmudgeonly father for the simple joy of watching him get wound up.

  
“That’s enough from you, Hanna Vexandra Frederica von Musel Klossowski de Rolo,” he said, trying to hide his own grin. “Off with you, before Kymon cuts off their trade routes and there’s no more chocolate in Whitestone.”

  
“No!” Hanna’s mouth fell open and then, realizing the joke, stuck her tongue out at him. “Fine! I’ll go! But you better answer all my questions tonight! Understood?”  
“We have a gentleman’s agreement,” Percy said dryly.

  
Satisfied, Hanna flounced out of the room, her dark braid bouncing behind her. Percy let himself relax. He felt as if he’d been running for hours, like he needed a cup of tea and a long nap. He glanced at the desk drawer and, swallowing hard, pulled a ring of keys from inside his coat and, finding the correct one after several tries, locked the drawer. That would keep the other four out, and he trusted Hanna not to go snooping any further. At least, he thought he did. It was an uncomfortable feeling, so unsure of another person, and one so desperately loved. It was, he reflected, rather like how he felt with Vax. 

He blew his nose loudly. 


End file.
